Tata Steel 2013 Round 4 - A Superb Win By Vishy Anand!

The 2013 Tata Steel Chess is taking place from 12-27 January in Wijk Aan Zee in the Netherlands.

This famous annual tournament has three separate single round-robin competitions, the A, B, and C Groups, each featuring 14 players.

The strongest tournament is the A Group and this year features 6 out of the top 10 ranked players; world champion Vishy Anand, world #1 Magnus Carlsen, defending champion Lev Aronian, rising star Fabiano Caruana, world #6 Sergey Karjakin, and US champion Hikaru Nakamura.

Chess.com has live coverage and commentary of a selection of rounds. See here for the latest details (scroll down the page). Wednesday is a rest day.

Chess.com coverage starts at 05:30 Pacific, 08:30 Eastern in the US (13:30 UTC).

.Round 4 - Official website report

It was a day full of wins and losses, twists and turns, but still one game stood out head and shoulders above the rest. World Champion Viswanathan Anand used the black pieces versus 2nd seed Levon Aronian to create an evergreen that left all present in awe, not in the least Magnus Carlsen who called it “mind blowing”.

As the Indian Grandmaster explained afterwards, he used the preparation for his World Championship's match against Boris Gelfand from last year. A novelty on move 12 was the prelude to a series of sacrifices starting with 15...Bc5! Aronian plunged into deep thought, but was unable to solve his problems and after 16.Be2 Nde5! 17.Bxg4 Bxd4 18.Kh1 Bxg4 19.Nxf8 Anand crowned his attack with the beautiful 19...f5! and White was unable to stop the black queen from joining the attack.

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Joining Anand at 3 out of 4 is the world's highest rated player ever, Magnus Carlsen, who slowly but surely increased the pressure on Pentala Harikrishna's position until it finally gave away. Harikrishna resigned before Carlsen could deliver the knock-out with 50.Nxf6!.

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Also at three points is Sergey Karjakin who was lucky to escape after misplaying the opening against Hikaru Nakamura. The American Grandmaster was carefully nurturing his extra pawn into a winning queen endgame, until one slip let the Russian off the hook.

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The best Dutchman after 4 rounds is Loek van Wely who moved back to 50% at the expense of his countryman Erwin l'Ami. The latter sacrificed an exchange on the black side of a Trompovsky, but never got anything to show for it.

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Also back on an even score is Wang Hao of China who used the advantage of a strong bishop over a stray knight to take down his fellow student at Beijing University, Hou Yifan.

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Italy's Fabiano Caruana bounced back from yesterday's loss at the hands of Anand by utilizing a 4-to-2 (!) central pawn majority to down Ivan Sokolov.

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The most balanced game of the day was the draw between Anish Giri and Peter Leko. The latter equalized easily in an endgame that arose after only a handful of moves.

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Group A Standings After 4 Rounds

1

Carlsen, Magnus

NOR

2861

3

2

Anand, Viswanathan

IND

2772

3

3

Karjakin, Sergey

RUS

2780

3

4

Nakamura, Hikaru

USA

2769

2

5

Caruana, Fabiano

ITA

2781

2

6

Leko, Peter

HUN

2735

2

7

Harikrishna, Pentala

IND

2698

2

8

Van Wely, Loek

NED

2679

2

9

Wang, Hao

CHN

2752

2

10

Aronian, Levon

ARM

2802

1½

11

Giri, Anish

NED

2720

1½

12

L'Ami, Erwin

NED

2627

1½

13

Sokolov, Ivan

NED

2663

1½

14

Hou, Yifan

CHN

2603

1

.

In Group B leaders Sergey Tiviakov and Richard Rapport opened a gap after winning once more. Tiviakov used his superior pieces to outplay Predrag Nikolic), while Rapport used a nice tactical motive to create havoc in Sergey Movsesian's position. After 18.Ne4 Nc6 19.Bg5 Qd8 Black missed the cunning 20.Bg4! and White won easily.

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Group B Round 4 Results

Van Kampen, Robin

0-1

Grandelius, Nils

Ipatov, Alexander

½-½

Smeets, Jan

Naiditsch, Arkadij

½-½

Dubov, Daniil

Timman, Jan H

½-½

Turov, Maxim

Nikolic, Predrag

0-1

Tiviakov, Sergei

Rapport, Richard

1-0

Movsesian, Sergei

Edouard, Romain

0-1

Ernst, Sipke

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Group B Standings After Round 4

1

Tiviakov, Sergei

NED

2655

3½

2

Rapport, Richard

HUN

2621

3½

3

Timman, Jan H

NED

2566

2½

4

Smeets, Jan

NED

2615

2½

5

Dubov, Daniil

RUS

2600

2

6

Movsesian, Sergei

ARM

2688

2

7

Naiditsch, Arkadij

GER

2708

2

8

Grandelius, Nils

SWE

2572

2

9

Ipatov, Alexander

TUR

2587

1½

10

Turov, Maxim

RUS

2630

1½

11

Nikolic, Predrag

BIH

2619

1½

12

Edouard, Romain

FRA

2686

1½

13

Van Kampen, Robin

NED

2581

1

14

Ernst, Sipke

NED

2556

1

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In Group C Argentina's Fernanda Peralta moved into clear first with 3½ out of 4 after beating Holland's Lisa Schut, runner-up at the World Youth Girls Under 18 Championship (behind Russia's Aleksandra Goryachkina, also playing in this group).

Fo those who missed it, Vishy Anand also joined the Chess.com live coverage for a quick interview with Ben Finegold and Danny Rensch after his game. On the replay video at Chess.com TV, Vishy starts at around 02:35:30.

What I really like about Anand is his honesty. He admitted that although this line was home prep for Gelfand about a year ago, he could not remember it clearly, and had to take time to find his way. It was a spectacular game. Aronian declared that he needs to do more work on his openings...and Carlsen has that swagger that says "Bring on The Tiger"...Anand vs Carlsen will be the match to watch...

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